Cognitive Script Theory

Definition of Cognitive Scripts

Shank and Abelson define cognitive scripts as related sequences of actions that characterize frequently experienced events and, in turn, guide expectations and behaviors in everyday situations. The recurring experience of a particular event creates an internalized “template” of the likely sequence of actions, participants, and props within that situation. A restaurant script, for example, contains a basic series of events that typically occur in a restaurant (ordering food, eating a meal, receiving a check, and paying a bill), a cast of regular characters (hostess, waitress, busboy, and patrons), and common props (menus, plates, glasses, tables, and chairs).

Cognitive scripts are useful mental mechanisms because of their cognitive efficiency. Initially, the acquisition of new scripts may require conscious and effortful cognitive processing and resources. [Page 186]However, once learned, cognitive scripts become part of long-term memory and can be applied to everyday situations with mental ease. As a result, people do not have to encounter each event as a new situation requiring a great deal of mental effort. Instead, cues within the environment activate a previously acquired script automatically and effortlessly. Furthermore, cognitive scripts can be generalized to a degree, allowing for flexibility within a range of similar events. For example, a restaurant script for an Italian restaurant can be applied to a Mexican restaurant because both environments encompass similar courses of events.

Media as Teacher

In using Huesmann's information processing model to examine the effects of television content, researchers havesame time. Not surprisingly, research conducted on college students suggests a positive relationship between game playing and visual attentional skills. In a recent study of college students, video game players (who had played action video games at least 4 focused particularly on how violent content can influence children's behavior. Huesmann's model draws from Shank and Abelson's work on cognitive script theory and from Albert Bandura's observational learning theory to elucidate the processes involved in of media-based scripts over time that direct their behaviors, expectations, and outcomes in real-life situations.

The Acquisition of New Scripts

Children do not necessarily learn from everything that they watch on television. Huesmann believes that new information is retained only if it is integrated through an encoding process by which the information is mentally represented and then stored in long-term memory. To encode a new script, a child must first attend to the presented sequence of actions. Attention to televised scripts depends on a program's saliency, distinctness, and relevance to the child, including the child's identification with the character and the perceived realism of the program. The encoding process then requires a child to rehearse the script by ruminating or acting it out in order to commit the script to long-term memory. The more a child rehearses a particular script, the more accessible it becomes to the child, and the more likely the child is to apply the script to future situations.

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